NWU: END ABUSE OF POLICE POWER

The National Workers’ Union (NWU) views the arrest of Ian Alleyne as one more example of the growing and disturbing trend of the abuse of police power. It is unacceptable that the police are allowed to violate and run roughshod over the civil rights of citizens. Despite all the rhetoric about democracy and the rule of law, police power seems to trump everything.

The National Workers Union (NWU) notes with concern a growing trend by the police in the use of deadly force in dealing with citizens, particularly those living in working class areas. This tendency reached its high point during the disastrous state of emergency inflicted upon citizens by a government intent on suppressing the legitimate strivings of working people and the trade union movement.

On February 9th the police raided the workplace and the home of Newsday reporter Andre Bagoo in an attempt to force him to reveal the source of his investigative piece about the foolishness taking place in the Integrity Commission.

The police attacks on workers on legal strike action which the trade union movement had to battle in the1980’s returned with a vengeance at the strike camp of TCL workers. There, the police not only attempted to infringe on the workers’ right to peaceful picketing, but were in the pay of the company and utilised taxpayer-bought resources to take scabs across the picket line.

The illegal breaking and entering by the police of the headquarters of the Transport and Industrial Workers’ Union in the pre-dawn hours of March 8th on the pretext of serving a maintenance warrant on the union’s security officer horrified the nation and brought the spotlight of citizen scrutiny to bear on the wanton abuse of police powers.

The unnecessary melodrama of the arrest of Ian Alleyne on his workplace is designed to humiliate him and to send a message that police ent eating nice. The time of the arrest was also designed to ensure that bail would be extremely difficult to procure so that he would have to spend a night “inside”.

These are tactics that working class youth, in particular, have become very familiar with in their interaction on an ongoing basis with the police. In many areas of the country the police are not seen as protectors and servants of the people but as oppressors and enemies.

If this storm trooper tendency of the police is not dealt with quickly it will institutionalise the routine violation of constitutional and human rights of citizens that will quickly spread to all aspects of social life and plunge the country into a whirlpool of social instability and terror.

The National Workers Union (NWU) calls upon those in charge of the police to take immediate action to eliminate this trend toward the violation of the rights of citizens by the police.

The National Workers Union (NWU) calls upon citizens to reject the abuse of police power; to do all in their power to bring maximum pressure to bear on those who solicited their votes to rein in this runaway horse.